libraries because of its references to sex and to an extramarital affair. Parentscited as one of several objectionable scenes Rabbit s first sexual encounterwith Ruth, in which Updike first describes Rabbit caressing her breasts andthen provides a detailed description of them having sex:He kneels in a kind of sickness between her spread legs. With her help theirblind loins fit. . . . [S]he reaches her hand down and touches their mixed furand her breathing snags on something sharp. Her thighs throw open wideand clamp his sides and throw open again so wide it frightens him. . . . Hissea of seed buckles, and sobs into a still channel. At each shudder her mouthsmiles in his and her legs, locked at his back, bear down.They also raised objections to Rabbit s constant fantasizing about sexualexperiences with most of the women he meets and the language in which heexpresses such desires. His two-month affair with Ruth, after he leaves Janicefor the first time, motivated further objections because the book seems tomake his wife at fault for the affair.The county school board established a review committee to consider thecomplaints and recommended that the book be retained. In making the finaldecision on the book, the school board voted 8 to 6 against banning the bookfrom the libraries but determined that some restriction was required. In avote of 7 to 6, with one abstention, the board decided that the novel shouldbe placed on the reserved shelf in each of the six county high school librariesand only charged out to students who brought signed permission slips fromtheir parents.196THE RAINBOWIn 1986, the novel was removed from the required reading list for thehigh school English classes in Medicine Bow, Wyoming, because of the sexualdescriptions and profanity in the book. In their complaint to the school board,parents cited Rabbit s cursing, including shit, bastard, and son of a bitch,and Tothero s use of the word cunt. They also identified the sexually explicitpassages between Ruth and Rabbit and his sexually explicit fantasies.FURTHER READINGAdams, Michael. Censorship: The Irish Experience. Tuscaloosa: University of AlabamaPress, 1968.Galloway, David D. The Absurd Hero in American Fiction: Updike, Styron, Bellow. Rev.ed. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1970.Hunt, George W. John Updike and the Three Great Secret Things: Sex, Religion, and Art.Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1980.Markle, Joyce. Fighters and Lovers: Theme in the Novels of John Updike. New York: NewYork University Press, 1973.Newsletter on Intellectual Freedom (March 1977): 36; (March 1987): 55.Updike, John. The Plight of the American Writer. Change 9 (April 1978): 36 41.Wright, Derek. Mapless Motion: Form and Space in Updike s Rabbit, Run. ModernFiction Studies 37 (Spring 1991): 35 44.THE RAINBOWAuthor: D. H. LawrenceOriginal dates and places of publication: 1915, England; 1915, UnitedStatesOriginal publishers: Methuen and Company (England); B. W. Huebsch(United States)Literary form: NovelSUMMARYThe Rainbow spans three generations of the Brangwen family, moving fromthe beginning of the English industrial revolution in 1840 through the firstdecade of the 20th century. Lawrence shows the destruction of the traditionalway of life and the ways in which the Brangwen family must accommodatethemselves to their changing lives. The early Brangwens farm the land andlive in harmony with their surroundings, but the second generation of Bran-gwens move into the industrial town of Beldover, where the seasonal cycleis replaced by a man-made calendar. Will and Anna no longer participate inthe rhythms of nature, and their relationship suffers. They fall into a fixeddomestic routine, and Anna begins to live through her children.Ursula, daughter of Will and Anna, represents the modern woman, becom-ing the first Brangwen female to support herself and to enter a profession. She197THE RAINBOWalso rejects the traditional expectations of her family, such as religion, marriage,and love, becoming involved in unsatisfying relationships with fellow teacherWinifred Inger and shallow aristocrat Anton Skrebensky. She becomes preg-nant by Skrebensky but takes ill with pneumonia and miscarries. The novelends on a hopeful note as Ursula awakens one morning and sees a rainbow, asif a new day had come on the earth.CENSORSHIP HISTORYThe Rainbow contains several passages that have aroused challenges. Law-rence believed that the passage in the book that prosecutors found mostoffensive was likely the one in which the pregnant Anna dances naked in herbedroom:She would not have had any one know. She danced in secret, and her soulrose in bliss. She danced in secret before the Creator, she took off her clothesand danced in the pride of her bigness. . . . She stood with the firelight on herankles and feet, naked in the shadowy, late afternoon, fastening up her hair.Other passages that generated numerous complaints by editors at Methuenwere scenes that were characterized in editorial notes as lesbian incidents.In one beach scene, Winifred suggests that she carry Ursula into the water,and in another the two are caught in the rain and after a while the rain camedown on their flushed, hot limbs, startling, delicious. B. W. Huebsch, thepublisher of the first American edition of the The Rainbow, deleted these twopassages and a third that had generated the most complaints from reviewersabout the Methuen edition:Ursula lay still in her mistress s arms, her forehead against the beloved, mad-dening breast. I shall put you in, said Winifred. But Ursula twined her body about her mistress.The Rainbow was censored by Lawrence before publication after editorsat Methuen and Company sent the manuscript back to the author s agent, J.B. Pinker, for alteration. Lawrence made cuts, but the altered manuscriptwas still unacceptable, and the editor again returned the work with portionsmarked for cutting. Lawrence refused to make further cuts, writing in a letterto Pinker, I have cut out as I said I would, all the phrases objected to. Thepassages and paragraphs marked I cannot alter. The publisher recognizedthat the 13 passages the author refused to cut were likely to cause trouble. Assoon as the novel was published, book reviewers alerted circulating librariesand legal authorities, calling it an orgy of sexiness, windy, tedious, boringand nauseating, and a monstrous wilderness of phallicism.The novel was condemned in 1915 after a private citizen complained tothe London police. They, in turn, acquired a copy of the novel and took it to198THE RAINBOWSir John Dickinson, a Bow Street magistrate who issued a warrant under theObscene Publications Act of 1857. The warrant called for the seizure of the
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